John Dudley: BCS will get the mess it deserves in final non-playoff year

Here's what we don't need in the final season before college football finally uses a (miniature) playoff to decide its national champion: Two SEC teams plodding into a tidy title game just because, well, that's what usually happens.

Here's what we need instead: Outrage. Injustice. Teams believing they have a legitimate chance to win being left out of the picture.

It appears we'll get the latter, and I know this is twisted logic, but that's the perfect sort of mess for those of us who've been pining for a playoff.

Assuming Florida State beats Duke in the ACC championship game and Ohio State takes care of Michigan State to win the Big Ten, the Seminoles and Buckeyes should meet to decide the BCS champ.

On the outside looking in, Alabama and Auburn will scream to high heaven that they deserve a shot. And they do. But they won't get one. And that's perfect.

The same money-first BCS system that served the SEC so well for the better part of the past decade appears set to slam the door in the conference's face this time.

Yes, the SEC is the deepest league in the country. Yes, Alabama and Auburn are worthy title-game participants.

But the BCS doesn't reward worthy participants, only computer-friendly ones. And only two, at that.

There appears to be at least a chance that Auburn could parlay Saturday's upset of the Crimson Tide into another win over Missouri in the SEC title game and leapfrog currently second-ranked Ohio State to get into the BCS game. (Then the Buckeye fans would cry B.S., as well they should.)

And no one knows what could happen if Florida State's precocious redshirt freshman quarterback, Jameis Winston, is charged with sexual assault and suspended for the postseason.

In the simplest possible terms, what appears likely to happen this year betrays everything we think we know about how to decide a champion in sports.

If you match the two highest-ranked unbeatens -- Florida State and Ohio State -- you leave out the team (Auburn or Missouri) that won the championship of the toughest conference in the land. Any other matchup leaves a team with a perfect record out of the title game.

In other words, pick your poison, which is what the BCS has been forcing us to do all along.

How convenient would it be to have that four-team playoff a year early?

Assuming Florida State and Ohio State won, you would seed them first and second, seed the SEC champ (Auburn or Missouri) third and fill the fourth spot with, presumably, Alabama.

And away we go. Let the best team win.

It still wouldn't be perfect -- an eight- or 16-team playoff would be much closer to perfection -- but it's closer to it than whatever matchup we'll wind up getting.

It's unfortunate that one or two worthy teams will be squeezed out of the title picture this year because of a system that's always been flawed.

But it needs to happen, if only to remind us, once again, of why it's such a bad system in the first place.